Maya's New Husband

by Neil D'Silva

  Then Bhaskar let go of Maya suddenly, so suddenly that she almost fell to the floor.

  “No father, I understand,” Bhaskar said, looking intently at the mummy with an apologetic look. “I should not have let her come here.”

  Then he looked at Maya and said, “My father says you should not have come here, Maya.”

  Maya looked in wonderment at her husband. He looked so different now; his hair matted in coils, his forehead daubed with bright vermillion, his chest smeared with white ash; and taking orders from a dead man.

  “Yes father,” he said. “I will restrain her.”

  Bhaskar came up to Maya again. “I am sure you will understand, Maya,” he said. “You should not have come here. You and he too.” He kicked the lifeless body of Akram with the stub of his mangled toeless foot. “I must obey my father. You must allow me to do this.”

  He went to a corner and brought out a rope. “I always keep this here. It’s very handy, you know. Sometimes people wake up before I am done with them. Now, this won’t be too difficult. You have to only stand still and promise not to wriggle.”

  He took Maya’s thin wrists and tied them to a pole. “This isn’t to hurt you. Only be a good girl and nothing shall happen to you. My father won’t ask me to hurt you. He will only ask me to keep you here. Forever.”

  Maya’s eyes grew large in panic. The very thought of being confined there forever, in that crypt of horrors, unable to see the sun again, caused an extreme agitation within her. She tried to unbind herself but there was no way of release.

  Bhaskar went back to the seated corpse of his father. “I have tied her, father… Okay, I will do that too.”

  He came back to her with a piece of Akram’s clothing that lay on the floor, and gagged her mouth with it.

  “It’s done,” he said. “She won’t speak now.”

  Then he walked up to the wooden platform and brought the remainder of Akram’s heart. Maya saw that about half of it remained, and he held it up to the chair.

  “I did it, father,” said Bhaskar. “The seventh is done. Seven human hearts. Only one remains and then I am free of sin.”

  From where Maya stood, she saw Bhaskar bowing low to a chair with a worm-infested body in it. But, for Bhaskar, the chair bore an entity he could converse with. What did he think? Did he think the peeling corpse was alive?

  She saw Bhaskar now, almost prostrate on the ground. He lay still like that, like a devotee in front of a deity. He seemed to be taking orders, and Maya realized, with horrified disbelief, that he was indeed conversing with the dead man in the chair.

  Then, suddenly, Bhaskar was filled with an expression of utmost pain. He yelled in denial and shook his head vigorously to indicate that he didn’t agree with whatever he had heard.

  “No, father, don’t say that,” said Bhaskar. “No, no, no, no! Please, no! Stop it! That is one thing I cannot do.” He convulsed on the floor. He bent his head between his knees. “Anything else, father, anything! What you ask is undoable.”

  Maya struggled with her wrists, but it was in vain. He had tied her in such a manner that the bonds did not eat into her flesh, but the knots were as firm as though they were of fused metal. She made a grunting sound that went unheard.

  “I did all this for her,” he said, “and now you ask me this?”

  Hanging his head low, he lumbered up to Maya. His face was grievous, but his stance was like an animal stalking its prey.

  He came up to Maya and she saw some emotion in his eyes; maybe she even something like a tear.

  “I am sorry, Maya. Truly sorry.”

  And then the tears began and he wept on her breast.

  ***

  Hemant was still putting his shirt on when Namrata was almost at the door.

  “Could you please hurry up?” she asked. “Maya is not taking her calls and even Ma is not answering.”

  The next moment, Namrata was downstairs and then she was in a rickshaw that would take her home, Hemant sitting next to her and repeatedly asking her to calm down.

  ~ 26 ~

  Rotting Dead Body of an Animal

  Namrata had the keys. The girls’ mother had insisted that every member of the house always carry a copy. Today, she was glad she had it. She took five minutes to reach her house from Hemant’s practically next-door house, but even after ringing the bell for two whole minutes, there wasn’t as much as a stir on the other side of the door.

  Hemant held Namrata’s trembling hands and guided the key into the tumbler lock. They kicked the door ajar and walked in to witness a sight that made Namrata shriek out in cold fear.

  “Oh my God!” She ran to her mother. “Oh my God!”

  The woman was in a pool of blood, still tied to a chair.

  Hemant moved up ahead and felt the wrist.

  “Weak pulse,” he said. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  He walked to the window to make the call and Namrata loosened the bonds that held her. “Who did this?” she asked, moving close to her mother’s mouth.

  The woman’s eyes were shut, but her lips began to move. It was a slow movement, just a quivering, but she made out what her mother was trying to say.

  “Bhas… kar…”

  They waited nervously for a few minutes until the ambulance arrived. A profusely bleeding but still breathing Anuradha was wheeled away by the paramedics. “One of us should go with her,” said Hemant.

  “You go,” said Namrata. “Be with her. I have to go to Maya. She is in danger. I can feel it.”

  “I cannot let you go alone. I will come with you.”

  “All right. But someone will be needed to stay with her.”

  “I’ll stay with Anuradha,” said a woman who had just arrived at the door. It was Laxmi, the neighboring woman, looking all resolute, though her neurologically-challenged head trembled with rage and old age. “Yes, I’ll be with her. You go catch the bastard who did this. Save our Maya.”

  It was a moment of gross confusion. Still undecided, they hired a rickshaw that would take them to their destination.

  “An abandoned shed ahead of her house,” Anuradha had been able to say when she was being carted off to the hospital. “Look for the butcher.”

  ***

  “What are you going to do with me, you sick pervert?” Maya spat out as soon as Bhaskar removed the gag from her mouth.

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” he said, looking crestfallen. “I did this for you, Maya, so that we could be together. Aren’t you happy with me?”

  Maya’s eyes grew large and her lips trembled with a fervor she had never experienced before. Her chest heaved with anger, and it became angrier as she thought of the dead remains of Akram and her friend Padma.

  “What did I not do for us to be together?” Bhaskar said. “This was our destiny. We were fated to be together. I knew it the moment I saw you with that unfortunate man who was your first husband.”

  “Samar?” said Maya in a broken voice. She couldn’t believe that Bhaskar had mentioned him. This was the first time that Bhaskar had spoken of her first husband. And there was such familiarity in the way he spoke that Maya immediately realized a sinister secret was about to unfold.

  “Whatever his name was. He was just a pawn in the whole game. Did you not see that?” said Bhaskar.

  “What did you do to Samar? How did you know him?” Maya asked, her voice shaking with emotion.

  “So many people we see in a day, Maya, but we fail to realize those people see us too. What do these faceless people think? When you came, soon after your first wedding, to Churchgate and sat at the stall of a roadside portrait-maker, hoping to immortalize this beautiful face of yours, you were like that too. So full of yourself that you could not see anything else. And ha! Immortalize! Isn’t it ironic how we don’t know what’s right ahead of us and plan for years ahead?”

  Memories of that day came back to Maya’s mind. She remembered how happy she had been. It had been a totally different life altogether. Then she rem
embered how she had insisted for a portrait. A brief glimpse of the portrait-maker’s face flashed in her mind.

  Bhaskar.

  It was him. She could see it as clearly as it were yesterday. That face was younger then, perhaps a little more handsome too, but it was undoubtedly him.

  “I scoped you out, Maya. I found out where you worked. I got myself into the school. But, don’t you see? It was all a ruse. It was not the work I wanted. I wanted you. You. But, you were so unattainable, so distant from me. Even when I stood in front of you, you looked through me. As if I did not exist.”

  “It burned me!” There was an edge to his voice now. His soft explanatory manner of speaking now became maniacal. He twitched his head as he spoke, like a chameleon testing its surroundings. “It burned me. You did not see it. Here I hurt…” He pointed to his heart. “Here! Right here. Every night when I returned from school. You were there, right ahead of me, and still you did not even see me.”

  “I knew my father had this oil. It can bring anyone to you, he used to say. But—sorry, father—he did not want me to use it on you. He said you are someone else’s. But, what did he know of the pangs of my heart? I had to do it. I had to stop him from breathing. Sorry father! He stopped breathing, but he never stopped talking. Never.”

  “But the oil was mine.” His eyes bore a wicked look. “And there was no one to stop me. I didn’t know it would work, but it did work, didn’t it? See… smell…” He raised his armpit and buried Maya’s nose in it. “Can you resist it? Can you?”

  “You are sick,” said Maya, trying to wrench her nose out of his grip with an expression of utmost disgust.

  “But father came back. My father, the great Baba Bhutachari, the Fallen Saint, the great misunderstood aghori… he is back with me. What I would give if I could be even an iota of his greatness! Perhaps that’s why he speaks to me still, even after… even after his breath has stopped. See, hear… there he is. Can you hear him?”

  Maya looked at the rotting corpse on the chair in front of her, anointed with several powders and herbs. Those herbs had kept the body from decaying to its base elements. The smoke from the fire burning at its feet rose behind the seated form and gave it an aura that made it seem bizarre, even somewhat occult.

  “I heard him tell me I must repent. His body there… seated right there in that chair… it told me to atone. My sin should pay its price. There was no respite, no other way. It would be eight human hearts.”

  Maya listened to him, afraid of what he might say next.

  “I won’t keep you in the dark anymore, Maya. Because you are meant to be mine. We are meant to be together. Nothing can separate us now. You should know. For us to be together, your first husband had to go.”

  Maya tried to scream in anger, but her voice failed her. The heaving of her chest remained the only outlet of her utmost rage.

  “He had to go, Maya. Don’t you understand that? How could you have been mine otherwise?”

  “You… killed… Samar?” Maya mouthed the words.

  “He didn’t struggle much, I promise. It was quick. I didn’t allow him to be frightened either. It was so stealthy he never knew what hit him.”

  “You killed Samar!”

  “I had to get him out of the way, Maya. Or else, how could you have been mine? Don’t you see how right it is—you and me together? We were destined to be. He was a thorn in the path of our destiny that had to be removed.”

  “And then,” continued Bhaskar, “I also needed the heart. I had to atone for what I did to my father, didn’t I? It was my first time though. There was so much blood. So much blood.”

  In that moment, Maya cursed herself for being so weak. She cursed herself for looking good. She cursed herself for ever having crossed paths with this man.

  “I got better though,” he went on. “The homeless man picking rags, the girl from the slums, the boy returning from college, your friend, our landlord’s son… Oh yes, this is his heart on the platform there. Is this how you wanted it to be?”

  Maya stared at him, her anger pouring out of her eyes.

  “Don’t look at me with those eyes, bitch!” said Bhaskar, his tone undergoing another abrupt change. “Do you think I am a fool? Do you think I could not see what was brewing between the two of you—that landlord’s son and you? It was a pleasure to get him out of the way. For you are mine, Maya, only mine.”

  “What did Padma do?” Maya’s eyes pricked with tears that refused to flow.

  “That fat bitch? Why did she have to poke her nose here? I couldn’t have had her telling you my story, could I?”

  The tears began to flow now. “Let me go,” she cried. “Let me go. I will do whatever you say.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Maya,” he said with big eyes that showed grievous hurt. “Do you think I did all this to hurt you? I had to atone for my sin of killing my father, or else how could I get deliverance? And you, as you are my wife, you would have burned in hell too had I remained a sinner. I had to cleanse my slate here itself. I have killed my father, and patricide is the biggest sin. Yes, I admit I have done that. I have killed his physical form, though his spiritual form still lives on. And to atone for destroying his physical form, I must pay the price.”

  Then he looked down at the floor again. “Then there were some people who didn’t like that you were with me. Like… your mother.”

  Maya’s heart began to thump wildly. She could not prepare herself enough for what he might say next.

  “Why did she have to come snooping here that day? What right does she have over you once you are mine? You are mine now—couldn’t she understand that?”

  “What did you do to her?” Maya said in a slow voice that was dipped in contempt.

  “I should have taken her heart too,” said Bhaskar. “Oh, why didn’t I? That would have made my eighth.”

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Shh, Maya,” said Bhaskar. “The rats here don’t like noise. They are hungry like I am. Hungry for anything that’s juicy meat. As long as the blood runs in your veins and mine, they don’t hunt us. But if this blood stops flowing, they’ll be upon us like an infestation. Save your breath.”

  Then he fell silent. He turned sharply towards the rickety chair and fell to his knees.

  “Father, don’t ask me to do that one thing, father don’t,” he pleaded.

  “Don’t you see this, you fucking pervert,” Maya said with a forcefulness she didn’t know she had within her. “That man you call your father is a corpse. It’s the rotting dead body of the animal that gave you your bastard birth.”

  Bhaskar heard that and stood up immediately and came up to Maya. She now saw the anger in his face. “You don’t insult my father,” he said, holding her hair till she yowled. “You don’t insult him, you ass-peddling whore! You know what? He is right. He tells me of a way where I can have you forever, like I have him. And I think he is right.”

  It was anger or fear or pure disgust, but Maya started choking uncontrollably.

  “Your heart, my dear Maya, will be the eighth,” he said, his spittle flying right into her eyes.

  ~ 27 ~

  Fodder for Rodents

  Naked as the day she was born, Maya lay spread-eagled on the floor next to the altar her husband had created. Her wrists and ankles were tied to hooks fixed on the ground, which seemed to have been constructed with the sole purpose of such sacrifices. He sat next to her in a fearful pose, his spine so straight she thought it would snap and that would be the end of this nightmare. He held the dagger in his hand.

  “I will hate to see your body go,” he said, “but that is the way it is to be. That is the only way you will be with me forever, trust me. I will build such a shrine for you that people will come to worship here. Yes, mark my words. One day, this place will be a temple. With these hands of mine, I shall paint the greatest altar there is. All saints of the dark will worship here, at the feet of my father whom they branded as the Fallen Saint. They will be he
re, in this graveyard of my own creation.”

  He applied vermillion on her forehead, the way Hindu married women wear. He bent down and kissed her eyes and then her mouth. Something stirred within him.

  “Father,” he said to the chair, “I am doing as you asked. Is this the right thing?”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “I want to just ask one favor of you—can I be with her one more time? Like a husband with his wife?”

  Maya was disgusted. The very idea that his body would lie atop her one more time repulsed her.

  “Forgive me, father,” he said suddenly, retracting himself as though he had been slapped. “Forgive me! Do not despise me for the carnal thought that entered my mind.” He picked up a stone from the ground and brought it hard on his thigh, piercing it till blood began to flow from the new site of attack. “Yes, I deserve this. I am truly sorry. That sinful thought won’t enter my mind again. I am done with her body.”

  He looked at her, “Father says we cannot be physical anymore. He is right. He says we are going to be spiritually one, and that requires us to renounce our physical desires.” He stood up and took the sacrificial dagger in his hands.

  Maya shivered. It was the fear more than the cold that made her tremble.

  “This won’t take long, Maya,” he said. “I know how to do it now. A direct blow of this to the heart and it will be over. You won’t even quiver.”

  “You bastard,” said Maya from the floor, and her eyes were like burning coals. “You can do whatever you want to me right now. You can fuck me, kill me, chop me to bits, eat me. I don’t care. But, remember this—I will never be yours again. Even my soul… it will never be yours.”

  He sat down, the dagger slithering from his fingers. “Don’t say that…” he said, anger seething within him. “Why do you say that? Why? After all I did? Bitch! You have to be mine, you see? You have to be mine. There is no other way.”